Adenium
by lunarays
Summary: Delusional! Surreal! Fic with stream of conciousness. Quatre was shot down in his fighter jet and had to trek through the desert in Episode 35 to 36. Oneshot.


Delusional! Surreal! Fic with stream of conciousness. Quatre was shot down in his fighter jet and had to trek through the desert in Episode 35-36.

* * *

I remembered talking to Noin. She said Sank needed weapons, she said, and I agreed, and I should get Sandrock. I'll be back soon, I said. And then I was taking off in the Peregrine III jet that Noin lent me. And the clouds, and sky rushed up upon me, and I was thinking, woah, I was saying to myself, flying the real thing on Earth was so different from pretending to fly in a stimulator in space.

The desert. I saw the vastness and endlessness of the yellow sea below me, and I knew, I was going home. It was the home that flowed in my blood and not the home I left. The ancient heritage, the longing of the body, I knew, Sandrock was there, waiting for me, guarded by those who would die for Quatre Winner.

It was a bit fuzzy then. I remembered thinking to myself, woah, retribution sure came around fast for you, Quatre Winner. There you were, trying to bring weapons into a place that shouldn't have weapons, and there, the soldiers, the soldiers were sending you a warning, telling you to run, run away or we would shoot you down. Woah, Quatre Winner, that sounded so familiar, only this time, the roles were reversed, and you were the colony arming up, and they were Wing Zero telling you to run.

I turned, I went behind that jet, and it in turn turned, flipped behind me, and there were more and more of them, like crows flocking around a man hanging on the noose, pecking even before the legs stopped kicking. It was, it was like for the first time in my life, fear had actually stared right through me. Fear was laughing right at my face, and I was thinking, that was not funny at all. And gradually, bit by bit, fear disappeared, yet its grin remained in mid air. I thought, ah, I knew the grin without the cat, it was the one. It said, we are all mad here.

Something happened, in between...? I could not remember. When it was not black, and I could see, I could see, wait, the clouds were rising very fast. My head said, oh, Quatre, you idiot, pull the nose up. Hoist your plane horizontal. The land was rising, the sand, the sand oh, the dunes were growing from lumps to hills to mountans.

Yes, yes. That was what happened. That was what happened before I was stuck here, unable to move. I pushed myself upwards, and my body said, hey brain, something was holding me down. Brain said, oh, idiot, oh, unbuckle your straps. Oh, my body said, thanks a lot, and my body threw itself on to the soft sand.

I touched the bump on the left of my head, and it said, OWW, very loudly. I stood staring at the once-a-plane dumbly, and the cat the grinning cat asked me where I wanted to go. I said, I'll get to Sandrock. Ha, it was, it was all sand and rock around here. Shit, Quatre, you were in the middle of a desert, quick. I sought through the wreckage, and got a robe, and the compass, and, handgun, and my canteen with clear, clear water. I said, Quatre, 5 kilometers to hike with 3 liters of water and a concussed delusional head.

I was walking, walking with my robe wrapped around my head and a stick torn from the wreckage in my hand. The bump in the head stopped saying oww, and my head was clearing. It was like, walking from one dream into another, the sun and the heat the heat it was overbearing and I was soaking in my own sweat, and the sand got stuck and I was becoming a yellow coloured dust ball rolling across the sand.

I could not open my eyes, not very well, at least. The light. I thought, I saw red even if I closed my eyes. Rashid said, there were red flowers in the desert and people called them by the name desert rose, only they were not really rose, but Adenium. Two quite different plants they were, really. And I asked Rashid why did people remember Adenium as rose but not Adenium as Adenium. He said, oh people wanted to have what they cannot have.

I thought, that was so unfair. Adenium was so strong, so robust and that little prince oh that he had a rose so delicate which had to be placed in a glass dome. It had, four tiny thorns, and the pilot which crashed down in the desert, oh he was like me, he said, the thorns are for spite. Adenium was poisonous, and even camels would not eat them. How could, how could anyone look at an Adenium flower and call it a rose?

The water was running dry, and I thought, the canteen was labeled 'drink me', I thought, I must have shrunk after drinking from the canteen, because the desert was endless, and I could not stop walking and I could not reach anything. I was drowning, drowning but I didn't remember crying sand.

I was going to die. I was going to die. I was going to die. Duo lied after all, he said he was the God of Death, but he was nowhere in sight. Maybe I would grow roots if I die, and pink flowers would grow from me, and people would say, hey look, desert rose, and I would resent that name. I would say, eat me, eat me, eat me. It would not be very nice to be eaten, but they should eat me nonetheless. Bite the dust.

And it was all going away from me, and suddenly, quite suddenly, I heard, in the distance, the unmistakable sound of mobile suits, fighting. I asked myself, who are you? I said, I remember now, I am Quatre Raberba Winner. I am not going to die. I'll get to my Sandrock.

I ran. I waved at the brown giants. Auda got out.

And he said, (it was an eternity before anyone spoke in quotation marks, I thought)

He said, "Master Winner! We have been waiting for you!"

* * *

A/N: emm, yes, those were indeed bits and pieces of Alice in Wonderland and The Little Prince you were seeing. Partly inspired by Roald Dahl's short stories and partly inspired by Misanagi's Golden Sands. (Go read that!) 


End file.
